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French President Jacques Chirac ends his final full day in office
Tuesday with an evening farewell speech to the nation that he has led for
12 years.
The debonair 74-year-old turns over power Wednesday to tough-talking
fellow conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, who won election on pledges of a
break with the past.
Stepping down from the presidency, Chirac will be closing out some four
decades in politics. Chirac founded the neo-Gaullist Rally for the
Republic party, today transformed into the Union for a Popular Movement,
or UMP, that Sarkozy headed before being elected president on May 6.
He still risks paying a price for his ambitious search for funds for
his party. Without presidential immunity, Chirac could be subject to
corruption investigations into alleged illegal party financing.
Chirac said his goodbye to Europe on Sunday in Berlin, insisting on the
need for a strong role for Europe in a "multipolar" world -- an issue that
was a mainstay of foreign policy under Chirac but which so far remains
unfulfilled.
The concept of a "multipolar" world to counter the United States is
dear to Chirac, and he made it come alive with the French-led opposition
to the invasion of Iraq.
Chirac has no intention of retiring to his rural Correze region in
central France. He plans to create a foundation devoted to sustainable
development and dialogue between cultures, to be launched this fall.
The only other president to issue a televised farewell to the nation
was Valery Giscard d'Estaing, on May 19, 1981, before turning over power
to Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. With a much remembered final
"au revoir," Giscard stood, made an exit and left an empty chair in the
spotlight.
(AFP)
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